international ground water modeling center

MODELCARE'96

Conference on Calibration and Reliability in Groundwater Modeling

On September 24-26, 1996, an international conference on calibration and reliability in groundwater modeling, MODELCARE'96, was held at the campus of the Colorado School of Mines, Golden, Colorado, USA. The conference was organized by the International Commission on Groundwater (ICGW) of the International Association of Hydrological Sciences (IAHS), and the International Ground Water Modeling Center (IGWMC) of the Colorado School of Mines, in cooperation with the International Association of Hydrogeologists (IAH). This successful conference was a follow up for the first international conference on calibration and reliability in groundwater modeling, MODELCARE'90, held in The Netherlands in 1990.

The usefulness of predictive simulations obtained by groundwater models is often hampered by the inability to indicate and quantify the reliability of model results. Uncertainty in model predictions primarily stems from a number of errors relating to the model formulations, such as inadequate concept and description of processes and interactions, inadequate sense of spatial and temporal variability, inadequate description of the state of the system (e.g., geometry, boundary conditions and stresses), and incorrect specification of parameters and associated error bounds. In recent years significant research has been carried out resulting in a variety of approaches that can be used to incorporate the information about these errors into the modeling process and to establish the level of uncertainty in model-based decision-making. Increasingly, these new techniques are being applied to a variety of problems and sites.

The 1996 conference aimed to provide an international forum for state-of-the-art presentations of the relevant methodologies and techniques and identification of the needs for future developments. Furthermore, the conference aimed to illustrate the practicality of various techniques through advanced case studies on calibration and reliability assessment. The main topics addressed in the conference include:

• Calibration of flow;
• Calibration of Transport;
• Calibration Concepts;
• Methodologies; and
• Reliability; and
• Uncertainty.

In addition to the three-day schedule of oral presentations, the conference included an extensive poster session for which a separate proceedings volume has been prepared.

The oral presentations at ModelCARE'96 (59 papers) have been published as a proceedings volume in the IAHS Publication Series (#237; 606 pages) "Calibration and Reliability in Groundwater Modelling", edited by Karel Kovar and Paul van der Heijde. Cost of this publication is £55.00. The Proceedings Publication of ModelCARE'90 is also available from the IAHS Press (#195; £35.50). To order, contact:

The proceedings of the poster presentations, edited by P. van der Heijde, K. Kovar and L. Konikow, contains 37 papers (379 pages) and is available for US $30 + p/h of $5.00 for US or $7.50 for surface mail abroad from: